


Jim and the Unbidden Guest

by musamihi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BFFs, Gen, Humor, Jeeves!Moran, M/M, Wooster!Moriarty, on a boat, ripping off Wodehouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irene follows Jim onto a cruise ship to ask him to take care of a little business. Naturally, someone else has to do all the dirty work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jim and the Unbidden Guest

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sherlock's Summer Vacay @ [, based on the prompt: ](http://sherlockmas.livejournal.com)_Irene, Jim; Biffles (Mean Girls) on a cruise - judging everyone._ Apologies to P.G. Wodehouse.

I was tipping back my third oyster when that deep, thrilling horn sounded: _launch_. Beginnings have always been my favourite parts of every voyage. The swooping energy, the short-lived but bracing shiver of infinite possibility, the knowledge that it's simply impossible to predict everything that will go delightfully wrong – it gets one's brain swimming laps in the best way. God knew I needed a swim, too, after hustling out of Sicily the day before like some two-bit Mafioso who couldn't keep his passports straight. It's true what they say – well, what _I_ say: it doesn't matter how careful you are, some nitwit can always fuck things up for you.

(And I wouldn't have it any other way. Without the nitwits, we'd all just push along like clockwork, and to that I say: no, thank you. A ship full of the ticking time bombs that are human beings is much more my speed.)

Anyhow. The day in question: happily ensconced with my aperitif, I twisted on my stool to watch the countless colourful flags begin to move against the horizon, where the slate-coloured clouds were splashed violently over the ocean like a flock of warring seagulls. If there was any cause for complaint, it was that things were going too smoothly. There was a breeze complementing the salt on my palate (and the amazingly explosive horseradish) almost as nicely as the wine the delightfully stuffy bartender kept topping off for me. The open deck full of tipsy, airily-dressed passengers made a sweet tableau in the mirrors that hung behind the well-secured rows of liquor bottles. I'd been alternating between admiring from my comfortable vantage point the cheery crowd and my own none-too-shabby figure for nearly half an hour, and I was nowhere close to having taken my fill. I had a week ahead of me of people-watching, of flitting between cliques and families and other strange social formations that tend to crop up in places like the Galapagos Islands or on cruise ships, and I could not have been happier. I've always loved a playground.

There was work to be done, of course, but it wasn't the properly distracting sort. I'd embarked in a rush after making a bit too much of a splash in Palermo helping a young man get rid of his troublesome aunt without also getting rid of her money, but lying low was no excuse for sitting idle, so I'd tainted my pleasure cruise with business. It had taken a little wrangling to get my next target to climb happily aboard this very same ship – a longer story which I won't bore you with, _dear_ diary – but climb aboard he had, and so now this little jaunt around the Med was unarguably an operating expense. Easy as pie. Even better – worse? – I'd finished having the poor bastard's records scrubbed not ten minutes after handing over my boarding documents, and so my bit was all over but the cheering. The rest was Sebastian's problem. (And the unfortunate Mr. Harrison's, I suppose, but he didn't know it yet.) My ever so valuable assistant was the only one who had to be at all businesslike. A fine start he'd made of it, too: when I'd stopped by his cabin for a visit his mood had been positively gallows. He'd had nothing to say whatsoever aside from making nasty references to my snappy blue Bermuda shorts, and so I'd left him below without so much as inquiring after our luggage – all of which, I'd decided, was better stored in his quarters – and come up to take the air. If he wanted to be dour he could do it without any help, I thought. He usually does.

Some company was required, however, if I couldn't count on my old reliable. When I'd first sat down there had been a young man to my left looking, frankly, rather lost in a pair of Nantucket reds, and I'd made the mistake of trying to engage him in some pitying chatter – only to find myself captive to a pretty high-handed screed about wine and the miserable quality of English translations of various historical inscriptions in whatever port he'd just blown through. I don't mind telling you I was openly relieved when he finally excused himself and slipped into the standing crowd to correct the conversational German of some poor girl on whom he'd been eavesdropping, even though it was done in a way that could only be called terrifically rude. 

But, well shot as I was of that drinking companion, all the same he left a void. And so when a petite figure in kelly green and a dramatic pair of sunglasses drifted up through the masses and gave me a dainty little wave in the mirror between the Beefeater and the Bombay, I turned at once to kiss her on the cheek, pleased roughly on the level of, I should think, _punch_.

"I didn't know you were on board," I said, looking her over with the usual fond eye. She was looking lively – not at all corpseish. 

"I should hope not." Irene's hand landed prettily in the crook of my arm. "May I?"

"Please do. I ran the last fellow off ages ago."

Her smile spread as she hopped up to perch on the adjacent stool, clutching her pocketbook in her lap and putting me in mind rather distinctly of an osprey. "And who was the miserable ingrate?"

"I'm not sure, actually. He told me he was an American, but he kept dropping so many names of grapes I thought at first he might be a Frenchman with a speech impediment. A lawyer, in any case."

Irene laughed. "He ought to meet my next door neighbour. She must have mentioned four times how much she'd enjoyed all the _absinthe_ she'd had in _Prague._ One likes to be polite, but feigning admiration feels so – patronizing." She tipped up her chin to draw the attention of the man behind the bar, and let her shoulders fall in a sigh. Irene's always been wonderfully expressive. I often think she'd make a perfect puppet. "I'm so pleased to see you."

"And you're an excellent surprise. You look marvellous." And she did, as always. An impressive feat for a woman who was supposed to be dead in a cold locker at a London morgue, that, what? That she'd managed to book passage without my catching word one about it spoke to a very thorough attitude toward the appropriate precautions. I heartily approved. 

"So do you – oh, look." She patted the fabric of my current favourite shorts just above the knee. "They've got little dolphins on."

"They have, haven't they." I beamed down at the pattern for a moment, then straightened. As charmed as I was with the company, I've never been any believer in coincidences. Time to get down to business. "Well – what are you having?"

"Seeing as I fully intend to help you with that disgustingly large tray of oysters – it'll have to be champagne, won't it?"

"Oh," I sighed, sagging under the shroud of cliché she'd just dragged across the scene. "You can be so disappointing. To quote Lord Peter Wimsey –"

"Oh, _don't_ quote Lord Peter Wimsey."

And so it was champagne. I watched as the carbonation drifted brightly to the top of her glass and rolled to the edges like a sunny little mushroom cloud, and listened.

She was tentative, even a little worried, but she hid it well. I like that about her; she knows how tedious it can be when people are _weepy_. The world would be a better place if we all rewarded maudlin displays with a sharp leather slap or two. "I have a problem," she said, spooning a little mignonette into a shell. "I suppose you're on vacation, but it's –"

"Don't be silly. Business is pleasure." And my vacation wasn't going to be very relaxing until I knew the centrepiece in my little scheme _re:_ Mycroft Holmes wasn't being dogged by anything too serious. "What's troubling you?"

Irene hesitated – only half a moment. "It's _who's_ troubling me. He's here, actually. He's been causing trouble, and – well, when I realized you'd be on board, I made sure we'd both be along for the ride."

Well, that struck me as awfully reckless. But then, if she'd brought him to me, it could be no small matter. "How serious?"

"As serious as it gets, I'm afraid. He's –"

"Shh. If you say you need it done, you need it done – no questions." I could get to the bottom of it better myself, anyhow. It was essential to keep Irene hale and happy until we could resurrect her for Act II, and if the price of that was rubbing out some unsuspecting man in the middle of the ocean, it was a price I was very well-positioned to pay. "I'll have Mr. Moran pencil him in. We've got one on already, tonight." I flicked a stubborn piece of chipped ice off of my thumb before pulling my mobile out of my jacket pocket and preparing to deliver the news. "He'll be terribly annoyed. He's in a _mood_."

"Who, Sebastian?" There was a certain sarcasm in her voice that I wasn't sure I appreciated, but with which I could hardly argue. Sebastian rarely toes the line and brings the tea with a smile and a bow, but we can't all be perfect paragons, after all. 

"Well, I'll call him up. He'll be just thrilled to see you."

He was _not_ thrilled, but the fact he didn't outright refuse to come within ten feet of her made it one of the merrier meetings Sebastian had effected with Irene. It was, and remains, I'm sorry to say, a very low bar. The two of them have never quite seen eye to eye on the subject of whether Irene is allowed to gaze tenderly at Sebastian as though attempting to determine how best to string him up by the heels and beat him into submission. So the greeting Sebastian delivered this time – "Please tell me you're taking _her_ to dinner, instead" – was downright civil, considering.

It was also, of course, Sebastian's way of beating his latest dead horse where I was concerned. I rolled my eyes. "I am, yes. You won't have to sit next to me, after all."

"Why, what's the matter?" Irene leaned in to press her face nearly cheek-to-cheek with mine, and it didn't take much imagination – just plenty of experience – to imagine the impish look she was hurling at him. "I _like_ the new cologne."

Sebastian mustered a grim smirk before accepting the tall glass of blinding orange-pink the bartender had just nudged in his direction. "Oh, but you haven't seen what he's brought to wear."

"Sebastian doesn't like my new jacket," I explained, not altogether pleased to be discussing it _again_ when we'd hashed it out so thoroughly the week before. "Actually, what he doesn't like –"

"It makes you look like a blind geisha."

"– What he _doesn't_ like," I continued, allowing him to goad me into raising my voice, "is how I came by it."

Irene leaned back into her own seat, drumming her fingers on the marble bar top and pursing her lips (although not quickly enough to smother the first quickening signs of a smile). "It's rude to make someone ask, you know."

"I got it in Paris, if you must know, backstage at Galliano, getting absolutely the best head I've ever had from a –"

"Oh, _please_ ," Irene giggled. "Nothing your size has ever turned up backstage _anywhere_." 

I sniffed. "I have a wizard of a tailor, thank you very much." Essential for anyone who doesn't happen to be sample size, which I miss by a couple of inches in the height department.

"If there was something you wanted to discuss," Sebastian drawled, making a show, as usual, of downing his drink in one uncouth slide, "I do have some prep work to see to."

"Right." I eyed the patchy, reddish stubble that said more clearly than anything that Sebastian considered himself to be on vacation, and reminded myself that, for all his deficiencies in attitude, he was a remarkably useful asset when he chose to be. The man came pre-loaded with all sorts of impressive abilities, some of them courtesy of the army – you wouldn't believe what he can do with a rifle – and some from … other sources. I've never met anyone else who knows how to cut a man up forty different ways and hang him out to dry without breaking a sweat. What's a little insubordination in the face of such brilliant butchery? "Miss Adler's brought you another little job to do."

Sebastian set his empty glass on the bar and cocked a polite eyebrow in Irene's direction. "Are you sure? I thought all she needed was that camera –"

"Don't be rude." My tone may have been a little brusque, but I knew these two were best separated as soon as possible. I had Irene slip him the man's cabin number and a few descriptive details, and then waved him back down to his lair. There was no point in letting him hang around if he was going to be unpleasant. 

Business concluded, I fell once again into watching the thickening swarm of people move in currents and eddies around the various obstacles presented by tables, chairs, other passengers. I've always loved to pick out patterns – the places people always stumble, the way the wind pushes certain fabrics just so far, even the senseless constellations of colour made of random arrangements of glasses, shirts, handkerchiefs, hats. Well, _some_ hats. "If I see one more distressed panama," I murmured, deciding I had best leave the consequence unspoken.

"I know." Irene was inspecting her fingernails, which were glossy enough that she might have been staring at her own reflection. "What's the point of having money if you're going to look like you don't know what on earth to do with it?"

"Or if you're only going to have one suit," I mused, perhaps allowing my imagination to drift a few degrees too far to the north.

Irene snorted, dangerously close to spitting champagne. It's never too hard to tell what I'm thinking on _this_ score, and naturally she hit on it at once. I'm afraid it's the one subject upon which I'm tiresomely obvious. "He looks so sweet in it, though," she said, trailing her hand affectionately up my shoulder blade.

I clicked my tongue at her. "Don't be so _nice_. You're not fooling anyone. You had him drugged and at your mercy – you couldn't have beat into his head that there are labels in the world apart from Spencer Hart? I mean, really – what's the point of being a mincing Cambridge brat with a mouth that could pinch iron if you're going to wear the same thing every day? And that _coat_ –"

"I think the coat is adorable." She was determined to be contrary, apparently. "I got to wear it, you know."

"I hope you took it to get cleaned."

"You know I didn't."

"He didn't wear it," I said, shutting my eyes at the gorgeously explosive sound of another bottle being uncorked, "when he came to meet me."

"Well." There was that sarcasm, again. "It must be some sort of _sign_."

I didn't hold it against her – honestly. She couldn't possibly know. She hadn't been there, she hadn't breathed in the unadulterated chlorine fumes of pure synaptic romance. Of course she wouldn't understand. Every bloody thing about Sherlock Holmes is a _sign_ pointed one-way to glorious destruction – but for the moment I left him where he so clearly belonged, in England, and contented myself with what I had on hand.

Another few rounds saw the sun slip down below the chaotic line of clouds; another empty tray of shells sent back into the depths of the ship saw the hands of my watch slide steadily past the zero hour, the approximate time of the kill shot, the thirty-minute window Sebastian had to get the body to its predetermined location. It would be a squeeze, getting two done in the time allotted for one, but I would never have kept Sebastian so close for so long if he didn't have a certain fetching ingenuity, a tendency toward flashes of inspiration truly moving in their simplicity and their effectiveness. Sebastian is undoubtedly among the middling orders of mankind, intellectually speaking, but in terms of instinct he is a remarkable specimen. 

I wasn't such a remarkable specimen myself by the time Irene and I shuffled down to Sebastian's cabin, leaning on one another's arms and laughing in unison at anyone unlucky enough to pass us by in the corridors. I hardly waited two seconds after knocking before sliding in my copy of the key card and waltzing inside to survey the situation. He ought to have been almost finished by now – if not settled cosily into his cabin for the night, then very near to it.

I should have waited. The acrid, dangerous smell of hydrofluoric acid – less a smell than a distinct peeling sensation on the inside of one's nose – was unmistakable. Immediately I shoved my face into the bend of my elbow and slammed the door shut behind me lest the fumes creep out into the rest of the ship. "You did it _here_?" I coughed, glaring at Sebastian through narrowed, watering eyes as he sauntered out of the cabin's bathroom, apparently quite accustomed to the stench, his respirator shoved up into his wayward ginger hair.

"If you're going to complain, _you_ can dissolve a body into a suitcase next time." The work clearly _had_ cheered him up; he was positively chipper as he rifled through a box of cleaning supplies. "I'd be happy to show you the ropes."

"Where's Mr. Harrison, then?" There was no sign whatsoever of the gent we were being so handsomely paid to disappear, which was encouraging.

"In that one – there." Sebastian jabbed his thumb at one of the larger rolling bags, a dark blue affair with a red belt strapped neatly around it. "Don't fucking open it, you'll break the liner."

"And Miss Adler's little problem?"

Sebastian grinned. "Naked in Mr. Harrison's shower with his brains blown out."

And that's how Sebastian earns his keep. When I can't be bothered to come up with something fabulously clever to kill two nagging but unimportant birds with one stone, I can trust him to arrange a sweet little frame-up or something of that nature. He's never boring. He has _flair_. This was a particularly nice example of his self-motivating spirit, and I thought it deserved a reward. "Not bad at all," I said, my zeal perhaps somewhat muffled by the fact that I was still breathing through my sleeve. I crept around him to peer into the bathroom, but my morbid curiosity was left unsatisfied. The mess, if there had been one, was long gone. "Well done, my dear. When can you start doing something about the – that is, if the smell will be an overnight guest, you're welcome to share my cabin."

"Gosh," Sebastian said with his usual bone-dry font of enthusiasm. "Thanks."

Why _that_ particular prize shouldn't have been enough to make anyone feel justly compensated I truly don't know, but I'm a fair man – or I enjoy being fair, at least, from time to time. "And," I added, gamely dodging Sebastian's swipe at my hand as I reached for the pair of red-flecked goggles hanging from his belt, "you can bin the Galliano if it offends you so very much. I suppose you've earned it."

"I was hoping you'd say that." Sebastian didn't even bother hiding his biting smile as he dug at a pile of garbage bags with his booted foot, exposing a very bright and very mangled mess of very expensive silk. It was enough to make even _me_ avert my eyes. "We had a _little_ spill. It was the first thing that caught my eye when I was looking for something to clean up with – so sorry. I know how much you loved it."

"It is eye-catching," Irene agreed, suspiciously breathless. "Come on, darling." Before I had entirely recovered from my shock she was tugging me back toward the door, and, really, I couldn't see much cause for resistance. There was nothing left for me here. This is what always comes of doing favours, isn't it? Heartbreak and tears. "You can help me change for dinner."

And in the end, I don't mind telling you, we made quite a pair, Galliano or no Galliano; we both look absolutely smashing in blue, and as it happens, Irene and the Captain wear precisely the same hat size. When I'm not so obscenely tired – when Mr. Moran isn't snoring to wake the dead from the foot of my bed – when I've got a little less gin on the brain, I'll have to tell you about it.


End file.
